Help with some of the features of the APP

i am a newbie that started using this application 1 week ago. I am really surprised how user friendly this application is, but there are some parts of it i do not understand (yet). I have tried to find answers browsing through the differen posts under Tech Help but did not find any topics which would address my questions, so i hope you guys can give me a hand.I am using my Iphone to operate the app.

Here are my questions/observations:

1. The RDI gives you our regular calorie intake allowed. I am supposing that when you do exercise the RDI should increase (logic oif you are trying to maintain your weight), as the energy consumption due to the exercise requires you to eat more calories. Here is what i observed: let´s assume my screen is telling me i am at 110% calories intake against RDI and THEN i input, say, 1 hour of exercise worth 800 calories. Shouldn´t than the percentage RDI be lower as with the exercise i am increasing my RDI. In my case it stays at 110%.

2. I find the capturing of exercise pretty confusing, but worse is that if I input an exercise and i want to delete it...it won´t let me do it.

3. What does this calories resting and calories sleeping mean, and more why do i have to replace the time of exercise in the program with the time of resting or sleeping ? Why doesn´t it simply register the calories exercised and add it to the RDI ?Don´t get it!

4. If i compare the total of RDI for a day against the summation of calories for resting and sleeping in the exercise section, the to numbers are different, e.g. tomorrow my RDI is 2100 cal, but the total of calories sleeping and resting is 1781 cal. Where did the difference of 319 cal go? I am assuming that calories resting and sleeping is the calories you can use if not doing any exercise...but maybe i am assuming the wrong thing.

5. Do not understand the information on the front screen in the Food and Exercise box. E.g. Yesterday night in the food box it showed that i had already eaten food worth 3079 cal (did not behave well yesterday). I then entered my exercise of 1 hour running and 45 min dancing (total of 1390 calories), but the the main screen shows 2464 cal in the Exercise box. Should´t the exercise box only show the calories of the exercise?

6. Is there a report in the web page that allows me to print a food log, so that i can give it to my doctor for analysis?

Sorry for these many questions. I hope some of you can help me on this.

1. Your RDI is going to stay constant no matter what. The premise is that when you exercise, you are helping yourself get into a caloric deficit, not give yourself extra calories to eat. If you choose to eat over your RDI on a day that you exercised more, that's fine. Your Diet Calendar will reflect that you went over RDI, but possibly still logged a calorie deficit for that day (shown with a green arrow pointing down).

2. It does let you do it, just click on the exercise and use the "Reduce by" option instead of "Increase by" option and then replace it with resting or sleeping or another activity.

3. FatSecret (FS) tracks all 24 hours of your day. So those people that lead very sedentary lives will still burn calories just by living - it calculates that "Basal Metabolic Rate" (the calories your body would still burn even if you just stayed in bed all day) and allows you to add on your exercise calories. But you can still only log 24 hours, so you have to replace your resting/sleeping with your exercise.

4. Yes, see answer #3 - they are assuming by the activity level that you input to calculate your RDI that you are going to do more than sleep/rest.

5. Again, see #3. You exercised to burn 1390 calories, but your body still burns calories just by being alive and performing the basic functions that the body constantly performs.

6. Go to your food log for a specific day (could be today or any other day) - at the top it will give you a bunch of options, click on Print. It will give you daily, weekly, and monthly options in a pdf document.

Someone who is busier than you is working out right now.There will come a day when you can no longer do this. Today is not that day.

@erika 2633: Thanks a lot for the time you took to answer my questions. Some thing are clearer to me now.

Although i think this is the best app there is for tracking calories and nutrients (i have reviewed a view), i still think that the way how the calories are calculated in the excercise box is confusing and in my h.o. wrong.

As far as I understood the RDI is calculated in the following manner: Calories sleeping + calories resting (no activity at all, e.g. a day in front of the tv, not working, etc.) + calories due to activity ( e.g. work) = RDI.

Assuming that you do all those things in a day (meaning you are a working person), any exercise that you do does not replace your work but it is done in addition to it. So it would be logical that the exercise calories are added to the RDI and so gives you a total of calories burned. You can then measure your calorie intake against total calories burned and know exactly if you are working with a calorie deficit or a surplus.

Of course not including the caloriens for activity sets a lower calorie goal (and that is good), i still think that there is an important information missing. I guess i will just have to put up with it...no harm done.

@erika 2633: As far as I understood the RDI is calculated in the following manner: Calories sleeping + calories resting (no activity at all, e.g. a day in front of the tv, not working, etc.) + calories due to activity ( e.g. work) = RDI.

Assuming that you do all those things in a day (meaning you are a working person), any exercise that you do does not replace your work but it is done in addition to it. So it would be logical that the exercise calories are added to the RDI and so gives you a total of calories burned. You can then measure your calorie intake against total calories burned and know exactly if you are working with a calorie deficit or a surplus.

Your RDI is calculated by FS depending on your current (starting) weight, age, height, activity level and how many pounds you want to lose. FS does not know what you do for a job, so it can't know what your "work/daily life" calories will be in comparison to your "exercise" calories. Also, FS is often times "off" in their calculations, which is why some members choose to use other websites to calculate their RDI.

I'm trying to follow your train of thought in the second paragraph of the quote. Any exercise you do doesn't replace work but is done in addition to it. Yes, this would be where a calorie deficit comes into play, once your exercise cals surpass your calories eaten. Your RDI according to FS does not always equal the calorie burn it will default for you, depending on the activity level that you chose.

Someone's RDI might be 1900, but their default exercise might only be 1700 because they said they were "moderately active" when they set it up.

I'm not sure if I'm even making sense anymore, but I tried.

Someone who is busier than you is working out right now.There will come a day when you can no longer do this. Today is not that day.

I still can 't get a grip around the way calories are calculated when you enter excercise. Since i seem to be the only one that has a problem with that, i must be doing something wrong.

I have entered moderate activity. The app tells me i have 2700 calories allowed in order to keept my weight. I enter 1 hour of excercise worth 251 calories and the app shows 1945 cal. I had eaten 2270 cal and was 430 calories under, now suddenly i am 325cal over... I just don't get it. Anybody can help me understand??? How can it be that if i don't do any excercise i have more cal then if i do excercise? What am i doing wrong?

In my book, there's no way that your RDI should be 2700 calories unless you are doing multiple hours of exercise each day. That's way too high for someone your weight with your goals. It's been stated pretty much across the board in the forums that FS tends to very much overestimate your RDI. Their version of 'moderate activity' must be a lot higher than a normal person. Try recalculating your RDI with a different website or just change it to something lower, like 2000 calories.

It looks like your resting/sleeping calorie burn is about 17-1800 calories according to your exercise calendar. So that's why you are having a discrepancy with your net calories. The diet calendar compares the calories eaten to the calories burned - it really doesn't take your RDI into account. So since you ate 2270 calories and only burned 1945 calories, you are "over" for the day, regardless of your RDI.

I could set my RDI to 4000 calories, that doesn't mean I'll burn that much. Does that make more sense?

Someone who is busier than you is working out right now.There will come a day when you can no longer do this. Today is not that day.

Thx Erika, it makes a lot of sense. Let me explain what my daily and weekly routine is. I have a desk job (very demanding, but it is sitting activity almost all day). Additionally i run pretty extensively, training long distance, running appr. 35 miles per week plus one day of muscle training.

According to what you are saying my RdI is to high, i should change it to moderate activity. I'll do that. The only thing that is confusing for me is that when i enter my excercise those calories are added to the rdi, but part of the rdi is eliminated so that the calories burned is not rdi+excercise but rdi-x+excercise (am i confusing you know?).

That means that if say they reduce the rdi by 300 calories and your excercise was only 200 calories, your calories allowed suddenly are 100 calories lower then what the app tells you in the morning. I could just try to ignore the rdi % and always aim at a calorie amount lower then the rdi, but then what do i need the app for? Does that make sense? Probably i am being to academic on this?

The only thing that is confusing for me is that when i enter my excercise those calories are added to the rdi, but part of the rdi is eliminated so that the calories burned is not rdi+excercise but rdi-x+excercise (am i confusing you know?).

Your RDI is a guideline for your calorie intake - think about that as something separate from your exercise 'calories.' Your exercise calories are not "added to the rdi" - they are just a way for you to achieve a calorie deficit.If my RDI was 2000 and I exercised and burned 400 calories, that doesn't make my RDI 2400 calories now, it just gives me a daily deficit of 400 calories. If you don't want that deficit because you've already achieved your weight loss goals, then you can go ahead and eat those other 400 cals.

PPagnozzi wrote:

I could just try to ignore the rdi % and always aim at a calorie amount lower then the rdi, but then what do i need the app for? Does that make sense? Probably i am being to academic on this?

You can set your RDI to be whatever you want manually - go through the same process you did to begin with, but when FS tells you your RDI, just type in a different number (like 2000) calories. You could stick with that for awhile and see how your body reacts and then adjust your RDI up or down accordingly.Then you can still rely on your RDI to tell you how many calories you should shoot for, but you also need to pay attention to what your net calories are for the day. If you suddenly have a couple of weeks when you get sick and can't exercise, you might need to aim for a slightly lower calorie intake if you aren't getting calorie deficits.

Someone who is busier than you is working out right now.There will come a day when you can no longer do this. Today is not that day.

Ok i got it now. I basically need to ignore the rdi and stick with my calories burned number and then compare with my calories intake. As far as i understand the rdi is an average calculation of your daily calorie allowance according to your life or excercise style. Since it is an average it does not take into account the real excercise level of that day. In other words if, assuming i have calculated the rdi right, i get to a weekly calorie intake similar to the rdi for a week i am fine, daily variations lower or higher are not important. Well it looks like i am really very academic with this, but then again also very practical. Instead of working with a daily average, i would have my basic calorie burn considering my lifstyle without excercise ( divided into sitting activity, working with your hands, phisically demanding or else) and that would be my basic metabolic rate and then i would add my excercise calories on top of that. That would be than my real metabolic rate. Then i would compare my calorie intake to it and if i want to lose weight i would keep it below 100%, if i want to gain weight above 100%. This would give you the possibility to daily measure your REAL calories burned compared to your real intake. In my view it is more accurate, more punctual to do it like that...and more logical and clear. but this is me and others might disagree. Nevertheless i understood now thanks to your great patience...and will continue enjoying the app. By the way, i changed my status to sedentary (in order to keep my rdi very low and play a little with my excercise calories) and FS gave me 2400cal. i then went to another homepage and the result was 2100. That is the value i manually entered. Again thx a lot , best regards Paolo

Sounds like a great plan! Glad it's making more sense. And really, it's not an exact science, but it's nice to have some numbers to compare to how your body is reacting in real life and then be able to make adjustments. Best of luck to you!

Someone who is busier than you is working out right now.There will come a day when you can no longer do this. Today is not that day.

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